Piercing the Fog - Air Force Historical Studies Office

Tools of Air Intelligence
cripple the Lufhyaffe before the planned Allied landings in France. For six days
in February (the 20th to the 25tb), Allied bombers struck repeatedly in what has
since been labeled “Big Week.” But it was only with an understanding of the
German losses in the air battles and from bombardment that Spaatz could
recommend with confidence a shift away from the German aircraft industry and
a focus on strategic air power’s ultimate objective: destruction of the enemy’s
capability to conduct military operations through the dislocation of his
industrial capability and economic resources.84
In establishing this picture, Allied air intelligence received invaluable
assistance from the GAF. From the beginning of the war, the Lufhyaffe was
notoriously lax in communications ~ecurity.’~ The British broke the primary
GAF ULTRA key early in the war, and the Lufhyaffe’s message traffic continued
to be one of the most prolific sources of intelligence. Most helpful in this regard
was the Lufhyaffe’s daily report. As Lewis Powell recalled, “Literally almost
every day, every combat unit of the German Air Force would report on the
number of airplanes that were serviceable, on the number of crews who were
ready and fit to fly, and, if there had been combat the day before, on the
casualties, and the wins claimed.”R6 Moreover, because German air liaison
officers assigned to Army commands used certain GAF keys on their Enigma
machines, BP routinely used their knowledge of the GAF keys as cribs or clues
for breaking into the more difficult German Army ciphers.
The information Enigma provided on the Luftwaffe could be almost
encyclopedic in its scope. Without exhausting the full range, it included orders
establishing commands, including chain of command structures, areas of
responsibility, missions, functions, and commanders; unit strengths, training
programs, and status; locations and impending moves; airfield status, support
requirements, supply status, and status and movements of ground support
elements; number of serviceable aircraft, losses, requirements for replacements,
and allocations of new aircraft; and operations orders, missions scheduled and
flown, and result^.^'
Even without intercepting every GAF message, using the air index at BP
and the more mission-specific files the SSOs maintained at air headquarters, it
was possible to develop over time a nearly complete picture of the Lufhyaffe.
This flow of intelligence was so great that, according to Lewis Powell, “The
intelligence officers in Hut 3 probably knew more about it [the Lufhyaffe] than
[did] high-ranking German officers.””Within the context of the overall war, the
real value of ULTRA regarding the GAF may not have lain so much in the
information it offered on enemy operations as in what it revealed about the
GAF’s deteriorating logistical base. It was this look into the German supply
system that revealed long-term trends and thus allowed for the application of the
most effective pressure on all elements of the Lufiaffe as well as other
segments of the Wehrmacht.”
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